The wood of the sequoias is good-natured, that of the yew spectacular.
Plums, damsons and mirabelle plums, on the other hand, are divas.
"I come into the workshop in the morning and a beautiful crack smiles at me." This is how the Bad Homburg artist Thomas Pildner describes it, who is showing bowls made of all these woods in an exhibition at Kronberg Castle until the end of October.
There are also vessels made of birch and bluebell tree, walnut and winter oak, giant cedar and sugar maple in the Rheinberger Hall up in the middle castle.
There, the wooden art on the slate-colored columns corresponds to the wooden craftsmanship of the roof beams, so that when you visit it is almost difficult to take your eyes off the whole and focus on the details.
Florentine Fritzen
Correspondent in the Hochtaunus district
Follow I follow
But then one of the divas catches the eye.
A bowl of mirabelle plums.
It's not flawless like the wavy, much larger sequoia troughs that will attract attention further down the hall.
But it has a sudden crack.
"Probably the lightning struck the wood," reports Pildner.
He takes a birch bowl in his hands and reports of "chaotic growth caused by deer biting".
Injured trees developed tubers;
the dots in the bowl are also such “signs of life”.
From Lufthansa to a turner's workshop
Pildner, born in 1958, has dedicated his professional life to wood for more than a decade and a half.
It all started in New Delhi.
As a manager at Deutsche Lufthansa, he used to be abroad a lot.
So he walked through the Indian city - and ended up in the workshop of a wood turner.
He watched the man for two hours as he worked on "heavy, dense wood".
Today the artist, who studied business administration and mathematics, says that back then it became clear to him that there was more to things than columns of numbers and business figures.
Immediately after a turner's course, different vessels were created than those that Pildner is now making.
His first works were even closer to the everyday object shell, the current ones are useless, i.e. pure art and not intended as containers for Mirabelle plums and walnuts.
Pre-cut with a chainsaw, the pieces are fixed to the lathe and turned round.
Then Pildner picks up sculpting tools and brushes.
Pildner speaks of a dilemma
He gets the wood from the environment when branches are cut off or trees are felled.
Because the Frankfurt Palmengarten and the palace and spa gardens in Bad Homburg are also among its suppliers, rare varieties such as Lebanon cedar are among them.
But private individuals also often get in touch if, for example, an old walnut tree needs to be removed.
Pildner speaks of a dilemma.
If a "wonderful tree" is to be felled, he is always so sorry that he cannot say no.
Even if he could never process everything.
There are now 16 tons in his garden.
At the end of the room stand, no lie, no: the works made of sequoia are magnificent.
Some gape like shells, others have grooves like sand rippled by wind and waves.
Pildner did not do this in Bad Homburg, but during a stay in the Baltic Sea.
Overlooking the beach and sea.
The "Tree Metamorphoses" exhibition organized by the Hochtaunuskreis district can be visited during the castle's opening hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays and public holidays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.